Russia finds MH17 probe conclusions highly politicised

Moscow: Russian Parliament’s lower house State Duma finds conclusions of the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) about the Malaysia Airlines MH17 plane crash “highly politicised and not relevant to the truth” of the tragedy, a media report said on Thursday.

The JIT, consisting of representatives of the Netherlands, Australia, Malaysia, Belgium and Ukraine, on Wednesday announced that the airplane was hit by an anti-aircraft Buk missile from the territory controlled by pro-Russian insurgents, Xinhua news agency reported.

“The conclusions are aimed at only one thing — to further marginalise the image of Russia in the international political and informational space,” said Leonid Slutsky, Chairman of the Russian State Duma Committee on the Commonwealth of Independent States and Eurasian Integration.

The experts relied on information from social networks and intercepted phone conversations, while experimental conclusions and radar data submitted by Russia are still not examined and taken into account, Slutsky said.

Slutsky said the experts of the Interstate Aviation Committee and other organisations would scrutinise the materials that had brought JIT to such conclusions.

The Boeing 777 crashed in Ukraine on July 17, 2014, while flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.

All 298 persons on board the aircraft died. Most of them were Dutch citizens.